Honor Play Malaysia launch: Made for play

It’s undeniable that gaming is a growth segment. Mobile gaming, in particular, has experienced a boom, with the proliferation of mobile devices and the growth of mobile games. It’s no surprise that smartphone makers have jumped in to capture the rapidly growing segment. After the likes of the Xiaomi Black Shark, Razer Phone and ASUS ROG Phone, here comes a new challenger – the honor Play.

After a pre-book or registration of interest the past week, the device is ready for pre-order today, 7 August until 9 August 2018.

Before we get into the pre-order and availability details, let’s look at what the honor Play has to offer.

First up, design. If you’re expecting something more purposeful ala the ROG Phone, then you’re going to be disappointed. The honor Play looks unabashedly like the nova 3 and honor 8 Pro. There’s no shiny glass back but instead a more understated full metal unibody. Which isn’t exactly a bad thing.

It sports a 6.3-inch Full HD+ display, with a notch, pushing resolution of 2340×1080. It’s a punchy display with good colour reproduction, brightness and contrast. Certainly great for media consumption and gaming.

Under the hood, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find an octa-core Kirin 970, the top-of-the-line SoC from Huawei’s Hisilicon family. The chip, of course, features a built-in NPU (neural processing unit) that gives it AI and machine learning capabilities. It’s mated to a powerful Mali-G72 GPU as well as 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage.

In the optics department, the honor Play features a 16MP f/2.2 + 2MP f/2.4 dual-camera setup with AI on the rear. The front, meanwhile gets a 16MP f/2.0 selfie shooter. Nothing ground-breaking here and surely nothing you’ve not seen on honor’s stable of devices.

But hang on, we’re talking about a gaming phone. So, what makes the honor Play special.

With first-hand experience playing PUBG Mobile and Real Racing 3 on the honor Play with GPU Turbo enabled, I’d say performance is pretty impressive. It isn’t completely lag-free as there’s still dropped frames in certain scenes and conditions, but overall a satisfying gaming experience.

GPU Turbo debuts on the honor Play first, and will be made available to the honor 10, honor view10, honor 9 Lite and honor 7X as a software update at a later date.